Summary
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon continues to impress in Season 2. Episode 4 continues a run of extremely good form.
What is going on here? I wasn’t remotely sold on The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 2 in its first couple of episodes, but Episode 3 was a real step in the right direction, and Episode 4, “Le Paradis Pour Toi”, clears it by a margin. Proper action, real stakes, and even – imagine this! – poignant drama and emotion? In the second season of a spin-off? Wonders may never cease.
I’m all for it, obviously. This is legitimately engaging and exciting television with a real core; it’s a good argument in favor of AMC continuing to milk The Walking Dead as long as it’s going to do it properly.
Daryl and Carol Reunite
As expected, Carol survives Genet’s plan to slaughter her sacrificial subjects and turn them into super-zombies, by typically contrived means. She drops to the ground when the crowd is machine-gunned, and when she’s shot with one of the super-zombie vials, she just plucks it out really quickly and is totally fine. We see here and in another scene later that these vials work pretty much instantaneously on everyone else, but plot armor mustn’t be underestimated.
This nitpick aside, though, it’s great fun watching Carol hijack a little buggy with a tied-up Codron and race through the Nest with an army of walkers – runners now, I guess – in hot pursuit. Codron stays behind to fight off the horde with an instruction to tell Daryl he “did it for the boy”, and we don’t see him again, so I guess he might have performed another heroic self-sacrifice. We’ll see.
Carol, meanwhile, makes her way through the Nest to a wounded Isabelle – more on this below – and then to Daryl, who has just been freed from the cells by Laurent. Their reunion, thanks mostly to Norman Reedus, is genuinely emotional. I thought it’d feel a bit silly, but he really sells it.
Isabelle’s Death
Just prior to this, Isabelle had finally spoken her mind to Losang. Daryl has helped her see a quite obvious truth – he isn’t a divine messiah, he’s a regular kid who can get hurt and die, especially if he’s fed to zombies to prove a point. The way he thinks and feels makes him special, yes, but that isn’t quite the same thing.
Losang doesn’t want to hear it. Isabelle knows this, so at the first opportunity she slashes his face open, and the pacifist, in a rage, stabs her in the stomach. By the time she runs into Carol, she has lost so much blood that she’s half-dead already.
Isabelle’s final act is to tell Carol where Daryl is. The two of them are by her side when she expires, asking for a final promise from Daryl to look after Laurent. Reedus sells this moment, too. Having found renewed purpose and real love in France, he’s forced to once again watch his dreams of a future with someone rot away.
Anne Charrier as Madam Genet
Didi and Theo
Laurent, of course, remains alive, and Daryl is determined to find him. He and Fallou have managed to make some progress. Daryl and Carol pick up their trail in a quaint little village where an older French couple, Didi and Theo, hosted them for dinner and were told to expect Daryl and Isabelle.
The village is full of elderly people, most of whom have already died and turned. The other villagers did the polite thing and locked their gates, leaving them trapped harmlessly in their old properties. Theo even greets them as they pass by looking for car parts.
Theo and Didi are gracious hosts and help Daryl and Carol evade Genet’s forces, so Theo’s later betrayal – evoking the Greenlanders in Episode 2, though it’s better executed – stings more. However, Didi does the right thing and stands up to Genet. She pays for it with her life, but she also brings about her downfall. After a firefight across the property, Carol shoots Genet with her own super-zombie serum, and she dies a painful, messy death.
What Next?
With the series’ major antagonist dead, you might be wondering where things can go in the final two episodes. Well, Losang and Jacinta are still alive, having teamed up with Sabine to form a united front in Genet’s absence. They’re more determined to find Laurent than ever, as are Daryl and Carol, who need to catch up with him and Fallou and get back to Ash and the plane. If he’s still there, that is.
Daryl is very confident that Laurent is heading back to America with them, so let’s hope that comes to pass. I don’t think the guy can take another loss.
